A little reminder.
Turning college into the new high school will make its degrees just as worthless. Maximize enrollment, particularly of unready students, and you'll need promotion to move them through the system. And then you can argue that any class they can't pass is unfair.
It starts with community college. It'll end at Yale.
Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads.
We could ask more of them. Or we could get rid of Algebra. In Safe Space Academia, you can guess which one they're going with.
That's the argument Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California community college system, made today in an interview with NPR's Robert Siegel.
"There's an argument to be made that much of what we ask students to learn prepares them to be just better human beings, allows them to have reasoning skills. But again, the question becomes: What data do we have that suggests algebra is that course?"
What data do we have that any math prepares them to be better human beings? Let's abolish math. And everything else. We can replace it all with social justice and more social justice.
"The second thing I'd say is yes, this is a civil rights issue, but this is also something that plagues all Americans — particularly low-income Americans. If you think about all the underemployed or unemployed Americans in this country who cannot connect to a job in this economy — which is unforgiving of those students who don't have a credential — the biggest barrier for them is this algebra requirement. It's what has kept them from achieving a credential."
If only we get rid of Algebra and anything else educationally challenging, the glass ceilling will break and utopia will be here.
It's bound to work.